Tuesday, January 30, 2007

My good friend the Ranger had the first Adult Ed. class on Dreamweaver last night. We arrive at the class room three minutes before 6 at the local high school and the faint reek of vomit hangs in the air. Oh yeah! Glad I don’t teach.

To say the class was painfully slow would be a drastic understatement. Two hours to introduce the class: what we will be doing, figure out what people in the class know about operating PCs...Blah, blah, blah…2.5 hours later I wanted to smack my self in the head with a large fish.

The saving grace is that I will be doing class with the Ranger. There is also one other guy who seems to be on our level, Ill call him Sappi.

Now I’m no PC whiz but I did grow up with computers to some extent. I understand file organization, some html code, and shit but other than the Ranger and Sappi we have a couple of older women with, IMO based on last nights class, limited knowledge of computing, and a dude Ill call Uni who probably surfs more net porn than Larry Flint, but that’s just speculation on my part.

Any way, I’m looking forward to learning the program, producing a good web page and hopefully be able to sell art work.So in the future keep your eyes out for :

And for those of you in the Portland, Maine area we will be showing the art at Breaking New Grounds on Exchange Street and possibly Zharra’s Monumental Coffee House just across from OneCityCenter both in April 2007.

Monday, January 15, 2007

Surfin' today I came across this new invention by Motorola...below is the text.

Motorola’s Bike Charger for Mobile Phonesby Warren McLaren, Sydney on 01.10.07Science & Technology (alternative energy) The big news of the day might’ve been that Apple had finally taken the wraps off their iPhone, but the greener gossip was to be found in the Motorola camp. This communications giant was unveiling a more modest gadget, yet of immediate utility to umpteen million folk, in what are termed ‘emerging markets’. Their particular do-dad is a battery charger for mobile phones that is powered simply by riding a bicycle. Motorola’s CEO, Ed Zander rode a bike into his recent keynote speech to highlight the technology. He reckoned it would be of use to the multitudes of people needing communications, but still lacking in grid connected services. "Farmers in Senegal use the phone to monitor crop prices. Health workers in South Africa use their phones to locate records while dealing with patients," he said. And it seems that rural China is a prime market for Motorola, who suggested that in a country with 500 million commuting cyclists, there are also five million new mobile phone subscribers every month. India, Asia and Latin America are in their sights too. ::Motorola. Via Engadget, Textually, and Vancouver Sun.

This as an occasional bike commuter seems like an invaluable tool. Plus I can imagine the other applications for such a device; such as: laptop charger for one. It could make blogging on long distance bike tours easier.

So the weather-people are all excited about a snow storm finally coming. They have been jumping up and down about it for three days now. Give me a break already. Anyway, in a last ditch effort to ride before the snow really flies I squeezed in two rides actually. One on Friday during lunch. My usual loop up to falmouth and back.. -13.somthin' miles at about 18 mph avg.

Then on Saturday i took the 'bent out for a 27+ mile loop around the homelands. I tried to shoot some video footage with my helmet cam but i am having a problem with the download. Apparently, the PC isn't 'seeing' the files when I open the drive. The data is there, as evidenced from the reduced shoot time, but I cant see the files. I fear I may have damaged the video card some how.But at least the ride was awesome. My legs were blasted. I had an avg. speed of 15.6 mph which is about right for that bike, considering the terrain. One day I need to bring this bike to a flat state somewhere mid-west. Maybe try the RAGBAI in the future.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

so my wife calls me. 'HEY! guess what I'm borrowing? Two cycling trainers. and three Carmichaledvd training videos." Cool. so I get these yellow framed kinetic (i think) trainers set up and she tries it out first and got a really good work out. The next day I tried it out with her...so we are in there spinning along and I was just overpowering the thing...after 30 mins i stopped. I was getting sweaty but just not really worked. On tuesday wife...

*sidebar* at this point wife is on a mission to find a trainer. i got her into cycling this year and I have created a monster. which is great! but its all classic wifey this is awesome i want all the equipment now. Of course it has taken me years to get the shit i have, but somehow she has almost everything by the end of her first season. anyway... *

on tuesday she went to the LBS (local bike shop) and managed to bring home (without purchasing it mind you, just borrowing) a different model Kinetic trainer , who the guy at the store..swore i would not be able to over power.

Well, he was right. I busted my gnads last night for 30 mins. I suspect it will be purchased by the end of the week and my abs will be ripped by the end of February.